Displacement of Palestinians from embattled Gaza confronts Egypt with array of challenges 

Special Displacement of Palestinians from embattled Gaza confronts Egypt with array of challenges 
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Displaced Palestinian children pull containers for water supply at their tent camp in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip near the border with Egypt on April 26, 2024. (AFP)
Special Displacement of Palestinians from embattled Gaza confronts Egypt with array of challenges 
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Egyptians take part in a demonstration in downtown Cairo on October 18, 2023, protesting a strike on a Gaza hospital which killed hundreds a day earlier. (AFP)
Special Displacement of Palestinians from embattled Gaza confronts Egypt with array of challenges 
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A Palestinian man ferries water at a makeshift camp for displaced people in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on April 4, 2024. (AFP)
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Updated 29 April 2024
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Displacement of Palestinians from embattled Gaza confronts Egypt with array of challenges 

Displacement of Palestinians from embattled Gaza confronts Egypt with array of challenges 
  • Egyptians feel morally obliged to help Palestinians but wary of a mass influx through Rafah
  • Officials in Cairo see large-scale expulsion by Israel as death knell for Palestinian statehood

CAIRO: More than 1 million Palestinian refugees have found their last refuge in Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city on the Egyptian border, where they grimly await a widely expected Israeli offensive against Hamas holdouts in the area.

Meanwhile, thousands of Palestinians, many of them with the help of family members already outside Gaza, have managed to cross the border into Egypt, where they remain in a state of limbo, wondering if they will ever return home.

For its part, the Egyptian government faces the prospect of a mass influx of Palestinians from Gaza into Sinai should Israel ignore international appeals to drop its plan to strike Hamas commanders in Rafah.




Egyptians had been sympathetic to the plight of Palestinians, despite their own economic woes. (AFP)

Although the Egyptian public is sympathetic to the Palestinian plight, shouldering the responsibility of hosting refugees from Gaza is fraught with security implications and economic costs, thereby posing a difficult dilemma.

Furthermore, despite taking in refugees from Sudan, Yemen and Syria, the Egyptian government has been cautious about permitting an influx of Palestinians, as officials fear the expulsion of Gazans would destroy any possibility of a future Palestinian state.

“Egypt has reaffirmed and is reiterating its vehement rejection of the forced displacement of the Palestinians and their transfer to Egyptian lands in Sinai,” Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, the Egyptian president, told a peace summit in Cairo last November.




Egypt's President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi (C) and regional and some Western leaders pose for a family picture during the International Peace Summit near Cairo on October 21, 2023, amid fighting between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas. (Egyptian Presidency handout photo/AFP)

Such a plan would “mark the last gasp in the liquidation of the Palestinian cause, shatter the dream of an independent Palestinian state, and squander the struggle of the Palestinian people and that of the Arab and Islamic peoples over the course of the Palestinian cause that has endured for 75 years,” he added.

Additionally, if Palestinians now living in Rafah are uprooted by an Israeli military offensive, Egypt would be left to carry the burden of a massive humanitarian crisis, at a time when the country is confronting daunting economic challenges.




Seen on a large screen, Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi (R) welcomes Palestinian Authority President Mahmud Abbas to the International 'Summit for Peace' near Cairo on October 21, 2023. (AFP)

Although Egypt earlier this year landed its largest foreign investment from the UAE, totaling some $35 billion, experts believe that the economic crisis is far from over, with public debt in 2023 totaling more than 90 percent of gross domestic product and the local currency falling 38 percent against the dollar.

Salma Hussein, a senior researcher in economy and public policies in Egypt, believes Egypt is not in the clear yet.

“We are slightly covered but we will need more money flowing in and bigger investments,” she told Arab News. “We also have large sums of debt we need to pay back. The IMF pretty much recycled our debt and we have interest rates to cover.

“In times of political instability, we see a lot of dollars leaving the country in both legal and illegal ways. This happened in 2022 and it also happened during the last presidential elections in 2023.

“I think the same thing will happen again now due to what’s happening in the region. This is all a loss of capital which can affect us.”




Displaced Palestinian children chat with an Egyptian soldier standing guard behind the fence between Egypt and Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on April 26, 2024. (AFP)

She is confident foreign assistance will be offered. And although the cost of hosting refugees will be high, there are many economic benefits to be had from absorbing another population — even for the Arab world’s most populous country.

“Egypt is too big to fail,” said Hussein. “There will be a bailout of its economy when it’s in deep trouble. And while investments and loans might not turn into prosperity, they will at least keep the country afloat. This is where we are now.

“As for the presence of a growing number of Palestinian refugees, I don’t think any country in the world had its economy damaged by accepting refugees. On the contrary, it might actually benefit from a new workforce, from educated young people, and from wealthy people who are able to relocate their money to their country of residence.”

FASTFACTS

1.1 million+ Palestinians who have sought refuge in Rafah from fighting elsewhere in Gaza.

14 Children among 18 killed in Israeli strikes on Rafah on April 20.

34,000 Total death toll of Palestinians in Israel-Hamas war since Oct. 7, 2023.

However, it is not just the economic consequences of a Palestinians influx that is unnerving Egyptian officials. This wave of refugees would likely include a substantial number of Hamas members, who might go on to fuel local support for the Muslim Brotherhood.

Hamas shares strong ideological links with the Muslim Brotherhood, which briefly controlled Egypt under the presidency of Mohamed Morsi in 2012-13 and has since been outlawed.

Since Morsi was forced from power, the country has been targeted by Islamist groups, which have launched attacks on Egyptian military bases in the Sinai Peninsula. The government is concerned that these Islamist groups could recruit among displaced Palestinians.




In this photo taken on July 4, 2014, Egyptian supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood movement gather in Cairo mark the first anniversary of the ouster of president Mohamed Morsi. Egyptian authorities are wary of an influx of Palestinian refugees into Egyptian territory as some of them could be Hamas extremists allied with the Brotherhood movement. (AFP/File photo)

The decision might be out of Egypt’s hands, however. Several members of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition government have publicly called for the displacement and transfer of Palestinians in Gaza into neighboring countries.

Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, previously said that the departure of the Palestinians would make way for “Israelis to make the desert bloom” — meaning the land’s reoccupation by Israeli settlers.

Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s minister of security, also said: “We yelled and we warned, if we don’t want another Oct. 7, we need to return home and control the land.”




Maps showing the changes in Israel's borders since 1947. ( AFP)

Up to 100,000 Palestinians live in Egypt, many of them survivors of the Nakba of 1948 and their descendants. Their numbers steadily rose when Gamal Abdel Nasser came into power in 1954 and permitted Palestinians to live and work in the country.

However, matters changed after the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. Palestinians became foreign nationals, excluded from state services and no longer granted the automatic right to residency.

The precise number of Palestinians who have arrived in Egypt since the Gaza war began after Oct. 7 has not been officially recorded.




Palestinians and dual nationality holders fleeing from Gaza arrive on the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing with the Gaza Strip on December 5, 2023, amid an Israeli offensive on the Palestinian enclave. (AFP)

Those who have made it to Egypt, where they are hosted by sympathetic Egyptian families, fear they will be permanently displaced if Israel does not allow them back into Gaza. Many now struggle financially, having lost their homes and livelihoods during the war.

For host families, this act of charity is an additional burden on their own stretched finances. “We feel for the Palestinians but our hands are tied,” one Egyptian host in Cairo, who asked to remain anonymous, told Arab News.

“I am struggling financially myself, but I cannot bring myself to ask for rent from a man who lost his entire family and now lives with his sole surviving daughters.”

On the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing, trucks carrying aid and consumer goods are idling in queues stretching for miles, waiting for Israeli forces to permit entry and the distribution of vital cargo.

Many of the Egyptian truckers waiting at the border are paid to do so by the state. “We get salaries from the government and they provide us with basic food and water as we wait here,” one driver told Arab News on condition of anonymity.




Trucks with humanitarian aid wait to enter the Palestinian side of Rafah on the Egyptian border with the Gaza Strip. (AFP)

Israel has been limiting the flow of aid into Gaza since the war began, leading to shortages of essentials in the embattled enclave. Although Israel and Washington say the amount of aid permitted to enter has increased, UN agencies claim it is still well below what is needed.

Meanwhile, the truck drivers are forced to wait, many of them sleeping in their cabs or carrying makeshift beds with them. “I’d do this with or without a salary,” the trucker said. “Those are our brothers and sisters who are starving and dying.”

With events in Gaza out of their control, all Egyptians feel they can do is help in whatever small way they can — and hope that the war ends soon without a Palestinian exodus.

“It is unfathomable to me that we are carrying life-saving equipment and food literally just hours away from a people subjected to a genocide, and there are yet no orders to enter Gaza through the border,” the truck driver said.

“It shames me. I park here and I wait, and continue to wait. I will not leave until I unburden this load, which has become a moral duty now more than anything.”
 

 


Israeli airstrikes intensify in Lebanon amid rumors of imminent ceasefire agreement

Israeli airstrikes intensify in Lebanon amid rumors of imminent ceasefire agreement
Updated 11 sec ago
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Israeli airstrikes intensify in Lebanon amid rumors of imminent ceasefire agreement

Israeli airstrikes intensify in Lebanon amid rumors of imminent ceasefire agreement
  • Latest attacks cause further destruction in areas stretching from border region to distant areas as far north as Bekaa and beyond
  • Israel escalates attacks to put pressure on Lebanese authorities whenever peace talks advance, says deputy speaker of Lebanese parliament

BEIRUT: Israeli attacks on targets in Lebanon intensified on Monday, as rumors circulated in Tel Aviv and Beirut about the possibility of a ceasefire agreement within two days.

US envoy Amos Hochstein has been leading complex negotiations between Israeli and Lebanese authorities with the aim of ending the conflict, which began on Sep. 23 with Israeli airstrikes, followed by ground incursions into border areas on Oct. 1.

Since then, Israel has assassinated senior Hezbollah leaders, and the confirmed death toll from the fighting stands at about 3,800. This figure does not include Hezbollah members killed on the battlefield, the numbers of which are difficult to ascertain because of intense shelling in southern areas.

The escalating war has also resulted in the destruction of thousands of residential and commercial buildings in areas stretching from the south of the country to the southern suburbs of Beirut and northern Bekaa. Tensions continue to run high as the population lives in fear of the intense airstrikes, with ambulances and fire trucks remaining on standby in all regions.

MP Elias Bou Saab, the deputy speaker of Lebanon’s parliament, said: “We are optimistic about a ceasefire and there is hope. But nothing can be confirmed with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. What might put pressure on him is the battlefield.”

Israeli aggression intensifies whenever peace negotiations move closer to an agreement, he added, in an attempt to put pressure on Lebanese authorities.

“We insist on our position regarding the inclusion of France in the committee overseeing the ceasefire implementation,” said Bou Saab.

“We did not hear anything about Israel’s freedom of movement in Lebanon, and we still speak only about UN Resolution 1701, with no additions and with an implementation mechanism.”

Resolution 1701 was adopted by the Security Council in 2006 with the aim of resolving the conflict that year between Israel and Hezbollah. It calls for an end to hostilities, the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon, the withdrawal of Hezbollah and other forces from parts of the country south of the Litani River, and the disarmament of Hezbollah and other armed groups.

News channel CNN quoted a spokesperson for the Israeli prime minister as saying talks were moving toward a ceasefire. Another regional source told the network: “The agreement is closer than ever. However, it has not been fully finalized yet.”

Israel’s ambassador to the US, Michael Herzog, said an agreement “could happen in a few days” but “there are still some sticking points that need to be resolved.”

The Israeli Broadcasting Authority quoted the country’s education minister as saying that Hochstein has the green light to proceed with an agreement. It added that a deal with Lebanon had been finalized and Netanyahu was considering “how to explain it to the public.”

Also on Monday, diplomat Dan Shapiro from the US Department of Defense held meetings with senior Israeli officials that focused on the members of a proposed committee to monitor the ceasefire, most notably the participation of France, and the details of a monitoring mechanism to be led by the US.

One report suggested Washington had agreed to provide Israel with a guarantee it would support any military action in response to threats from Lebanon and to disrupt any Hezbollah presence along the border.

According to news website Axios, the draft agreement for a ceasefire includes a 60-day transitional period during which the Israeli army would withdraw from southern Lebanon, to be replaced by the Lebanese army in areas close to the border, and Hezbollah would move its heavy weapons from the border region to areas north of the Litani Line.

Against this backdrop of peace negotiations, the continual Israeli airstrikes on the southern suburbs of Beirut intensified on Monday, following 10 strikes the previous evening. The attacks targeted Haret Hreik, Hadath, Ghobeiry, Bir Al-Abed and Sfeir.

Hundreds of buildings have been damaged or destroyed, and as Arab News visited targeted areas, residents said “there have never been any Hezbollah offices in these structures, neither now nor in the past, and the buildings are mainly for residential purposes.”

A lawyer called Imad said the apartment building in the Hadath area in which he lived collapsed when it was hit by an airstrike.

“It is unbelievable that they use Hezbollah as a pretext to destroy our homes, which we purchased through financial loans to provide shelter for our families. They intend to annihilate us all,” he said.

The Israeli army said on Monday that an airstrike that hit the Basta area of central Beirut early on Saturday had “targeted a command center affiliated with Hezbollah.”

Efforts to help the injured and recover the bodies of the dead continued at the scene of the attack until Sunday evening. The Lebanese Health Ministry said at least 29 people were killed and 67 wounded.

The Israeli army also carried out numerous airstrikes in southern Lebanon, mainly targeting the cities of Tyre and Nabatieh. Ten people were killed, including a woman and a member of the Lebanese army, and 17 injured in three airstrikes on Tyre.

Also in Tyre, an Israeli drone killed a motorcycle rider in a parking lot near the Central Bank of Lebanon. And three civilians were killed by an airstrike in the town of Ghazieh, south of Sidon.

From the southern border to the northern banks of the Litani River, no area has been spared from Israeli airstrikes, which have extended as far north as the city of Baalbek, and the town of Hermel close to the border with Syria.

In the east, back-and-forth operations between the Israeli army and Hezbollah continued as the former attempted to gain control over the town of Khiam. Its forces advanced, supported by Merkava tanks, from the southern outskirts under the cover of airstrikes and artillery bombardment, moving into the center of the town and toward Ebel Al-Saqi and Jdidet Marjeyoun.

The Israeli army also deployed tanks between olive groves in the town of Deir Mimas after an incursion into the town last week. It began advancing toward the Tal Nahas-Kfar Kila-Qlayaa triangle. Elsewhere, Hezbollah and Israeli forces clashed in the western sector of the Maroun Al-Ras-Ainata-Bint Jbeil triangle.

Hezbollah said it targeted Israeli army positions on the outskirts of the towns of Shamaa and Biyada. Israeli forces carried out house-demolition operations in Shamaa.

Hezbollah also continued to launch attacks against northern Israel. The group said its rockets “reached the Shraga base, north of the city of Acre, and targeted an Israeli army gathering in the settlement of Meron.”

Israeli medical services said one person was injured in Nahariya by falling fragments from a rocket.


Hamas-run Gaza’s health ministry says war death toll at 44,235

Hamas-run Gaza’s health ministry says war death toll at 44,235
Updated 26 November 2024
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Hamas-run Gaza’s health ministry says war death toll at 44,235

Hamas-run Gaza’s health ministry says war death toll at 44,235
  • Israeli troops or settlers have killed at least 777 Palestinians in the West Bank since the start of the Gaza war, according to the Ramallah-based health ministry

GAZA CITY: The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said Monday that at least 44,235 people have been killed in more than 13 months of war between Israel and Palestinian militants.
The toll includes 24 deaths in the previous 24 hours, according to the ministry, which said 104,638 people have been wounded in the Gaza Strip since the war began when Hamas militants attacked Israel on October 7, 2023.
 

 


Syria’s ‘large quantities’ of toxic arms serious concern: watchdog

Syria’s ‘large quantities’ of toxic arms serious concern: watchdog
Updated 26 November 2024
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Syria’s ‘large quantities’ of toxic arms serious concern: watchdog

Syria’s ‘large quantities’ of toxic arms serious concern: watchdog
  • The war has killed more than half a million people, displaced millions, and ravaged the country’s infrastructure and industry

THE HAGUE: The world’s chemical watchdog said Monday that it was “seriously concerned” by large gaps in Syria’s declaration about its chemical weapons stockpile, as large quantities of potentially banned warfare agents might be involved.
Syria agreed in 2013 to join the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, shortly after an alleged chemical gas attack killed more than 1,400 people near Damascus.
“Despite more than a decade of intensive work, the Syrian Arab Republic chemical weapons dossier still cannot be closed,” the watchdog’s director-general Fernando Arias told delegates at the OPCW’s annual meeting.
The Hague-based global watchdog has previously accused President Bashar Assad’s regime of continued attacks on civilians with chemical weapons during the Middle Eastern country’s brutal civil war.
“Since 2014, the (OPCW) Secretariat has reported a total of 26 outstanding issues of which seven have been fulfilled,” in relation to chemical weapon stockpiles in Syria, Arias said.
“The substance of the remaining 19 outstanding issues is of serious concern as it involves large quantities of potentially undeclared or unverified chemical warfare agents and chemical munitions,” he told delegates.
Syria’s OPCW voting rights were suspended in 2021, an unprecedented rebuke, following poison gas attacks on civilians in 2017.
Last year the watchdog blamed Syria for a 2018 chlorine attack that killed 43 people, in a long-awaited report on a case that sparked tensions between Damascus and the West.
Damascus has denied the allegations and insisted it has handed over its stockpiles.
Syria’s civil war broke out in 2011 after the government’s repression of peaceful demonstrations escalated into a deadly conflict that pulled in foreign powers and global jihadists.
The war has killed more than half a million people, displaced millions, and ravaged the country’s infrastructure and industry.


Syria state TV says Israel struck bridges near border with Lebanon

Syria state TV says Israel struck bridges near border with Lebanon
Updated 26 November 2024
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Syria state TV says Israel struck bridges near border with Lebanon

Syria state TV says Israel struck bridges near border with Lebanon
  • The defense ministry said “the Israeli enemy launched an air aggression from the direction of Lebanese territory, targeting crossing points that it had previously hit” between the two countries

DAMASUS: Syrian state television reported Israeli strikes on several bridges in the Qusayr region near the Lebanese border on Monday, with the defense ministry reporting two civilians injured in the attacks.
Israel’s military has intensified its strikes on targets in Syria since its conflict with Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon escalated into full-scale war in late September after almost a year of cross-border hostilities.
“An Israeli aggression targeted the bridges of Al-Jubaniyeh, Al-Daf, Arjoun, and the Al-Nizariyeh Gate in the Qusayr area,” state television said, with official news agency SANA reporting damage in the attacks.
The defense ministry said “the Israeli enemy launched an air aggression from the direction of Lebanese territory, targeting crossing points that it had previously hit” between the two countries.
The attacks “injured two civilians and caused material losses,” it added.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor, based in Britain, said the attacks had “killed two Syrians working with Hezbollah and injured five others,” giving a preliminary toll.
Earlier, the monitor with a network of sources in Syria had said the “Israeli strikes targeted” an official land border crossing in the Qusayr area and six bridges on the Orontes River near the border with Lebanon.
Since September, Israel has bombed land crossings between Lebanon and Syria, putting them out of service. It accuses Hezbollah of using the routes, key for people fleeing the war in Lebanon, to transfer weapons from Syria.

 

 


Iraqis sentenced to prison in $2.5bn corruption case

Iraqis sentenced to prison in $2.5bn corruption case
Updated 26 November 2024
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Iraqis sentenced to prison in $2.5bn corruption case

Iraqis sentenced to prison in $2.5bn corruption case
  • A criminal court in Baghdad specializing in corruption cases issued the prison sentences ranging from three to 10 years, a statement from Iraq’s Supreme Judicial Council said

BAGHDAD: An Iraqi court on Monday sentenced to prison former senior officials, a businessman and others for involvement in the theft of $2.5 billion in public funds — one of Iraq’s biggest corruption cases.
The three most high-profile individuals sentenced — businessman Nour Zuhair, as well as former prime minister Mustafa Al-Kadhemi’s cabinet director Raed Jouhi and a former adviser, Haitham Al-Juburi — are on the run and were tried in absentia.
The scandal, dubbed the “heist of the century,” has sparked widespread anger in Iraq, which is ravaged by rampant corruption, unemployment and decaying infrastructure after decades of conflict.
A criminal court in Baghdad specializing in corruption cases issued the prison sentences ranging from three to 10 years, a statement from Iraq’s Supreme Judicial Council said.
Thirteen people received sentences on Monday, according to member of Parliament Mostafa Sanad.
Most of them, 10, are from Iraq’s tax authority and include its former director and deputy, he added on his Telegram channel.
Iraq revealed two years ago that at least $2.5 billion was stolen between September 2021 and August 2022 through 247 cheques that were cashed by five companies.
The money was then withdrawn in cash from the accounts of those firms.
A judicial source told AFP that some tax officials charged were in detention, without detailing how many.
Businessman Zuhair was sentenced to 10 years in prison, according to the judiciary statement.
He was arrested at Baghdad airport in October 2022 as he was trying to leave the country, but released on bail a month later after giving back more than $125 million and pledging to return the rest in instalments.
The wealthy businessman was back in the news in August after he reportedly had a car crash in Lebanon, following an interview he gave to an Iraqi news channel.
Juburi, the former prime ministerial adviser, received a three-year prison sentence. He also returned $2.6 million before disappearing, a judicial source told AFP.
Kadhemi’s cabinet director Raed Jouhi, also currently outside Iraq, was sentenced to six years in prison — alongside “a number of officials involved in the crime,” according to the judiciary’s statement.
Corruption is rampant across Iraq’s public institutions, but convictions typically target mid-level officials or minor players and rarely those at the top of the power hierarchy.